I Used to Swim in Drunken Lake

By G.A. Cooper

Across the street from us was a block of bush. Like all bush it was full of Wild Rose and Indian Paint Brush. I liked the Indian Paint Brush best. It was a better colour, and it didn't prick and cut you as you passed. This was particularly important when anybody hit a home run from our yard and it carried across the street. We only had one ball. A home run meant searching for it through that thorny Wild Rose

In the middle of the bush was a little meadow maybe a couple of hundred feet across. In the spring it filled with water to a depth of a few feet. We called it The Slough. That was all that remained of what had been a sizeable body that once revelled in the name of Drunken Lake.

A map of Edmonton from 1882 shows Drunken Lake running for about a half mile along the line between the Hudson's Bay Reserve and Malcolm Groat's property. The trail from Fort Edmonton to St. Albert ran close by. Hunters returning home from trading at the Fort would stop there, off the Company property, to sample their trade goods.

In the spring we built rafts out of the surrounding poplar trees and poled around on them. Many were too small and rather unstable, so we frequently also had a swim. Smelled a bit. Some of the bigger boys liberated a few ties from the railroad and built more stable rafts. But they were still pretty small. Of course it didn't matter that much if you fell in. The Slough was only two or three feet deep, except for a couple of holes that had probably at one time been somebody's basements. That was one of the problems. We could never remember in the wet season exactly where the holes were that we could see perfectly well in the dry.

On really hot days in the summer I sometimes swam in The Slough, much to my mother's horror. There was no outlet, so whatever went into that water stayed there until it evaporated. Anyway it never did me any harm. I have never missed a day of school or work since.